DENJIN MAKAI II (GUARDIANS)
Original Release: Banpresto, 1995, Arcade
A Japan-only obscurity that (as of yet) has never been re-released, Guardians is a slick and well-made brawler that suffers only from being too short
Denjin Makai II (Arcade, Banpresto, 1995)
Where to Buy: eBay
How to Emulate: Arcade Emulation Guide
Review by: C. M0use
The sequel to Denjin Makai was pumped out pretty fast, only about a year later, but it has a substantially different gameplay style. The first game centered itself on Street Fighter-style move inputs, and really forced you to make use of those moves for crowd control or you'd be in trouble quickly. Guardians dumps that approach for the most part, focusing instead on a single attack combo that you vary up by holding different directional buttons in the midst of it, and adding some new basic moves like a vertical dash.
The result is definitely a much easier game overall. You don't even really need to get much into the game's move depth to get through it, the only really difficult portions are the boss battles from level 3 on where the boss can basically just cancel all of your moves at will and requires careful picking and pecking to not get countered for big damage constantly.
But though easy and short, the presentation is also much more slick and enjoyable with lots of fun little background details and a cast of bizarre enemies as you brawl your way through some sort of Fifth Element-esque far future cyber world. If there's a story the game doesn't bother expanding on it at all in-game, just pick one of eight warriors and off you go mashing on the ne'er-do-wells of tomorrow.
Despite the good character selection (is there another arcade title from this period that offers eight or more playables? offhand I feel like X-Men's six was the prior record), robust move sets and fluid gameplay, Denjin Makai II offers little replayability as it's unfortunately short and totally linear. But it's a great one if you like to run through these titles once with some buds just to enjoy the ride.
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